Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, 33°, Grand Cross
President, The George Washington University
2121 Eye Street, NW, Washington, DC 20052

Heroes in athletics make a special and powerful appeal to the American heart.

On the evening of March 29, seated in my Washington, D.C., home, I was watching a historic event: The University of Connecticut Huskies were in the process of defeating the Blue Devils of Duke. It was too exciting to keep to myself. Eyes glued to my television, I telephoned my father-in-law in West Hartford and my brother-in-law in Columbia, both in Connecticut, and they, of course, were watching the game, too.

As subsequent days went by, I found myself thinking more and more about two connected subjects: the relationship between athletics and higher education, as well as between athletics and America.

Where American colleges and universities were concerned, the meaning of the victory—and of UConn’s general ascent to the basketball firmament—was neatly articulated by UConn President Philip E. Austin when he told The New York Times: "It helps us recruit students, enhances our ability to sell our programs to the legislature, and energizes alumni and others who might be called on for philanthropic support." As President Austin’s words testified, athletics, for our schools of higher education, is a key to academic quality.

As the 20th century has moved toward its close, academic brains have seemed less and less contrary to academic brawn. One reason for the narrowing of the gap has been the sheer growth of our sophistication. We have all learned how much thinking goes into a sports victory, thinking that takes place at lightning speed.

More important, however, has been our awareness of just why athletics make a special and powerful appeal to the American heart.

The United States represents the most egalitarian nation our planet has ever seen. Ours is a country where status is not awarded on the basis of ancestry. It has to be earned through competition, which is often a painful process in which you have to be better at something than most other people. That turns many people’s lives into "athletic" events in their own right. In a society whose members regard sport as a projection of personal struggle, is it any wonder that athletic events such as the Huskies victory take on an allegorical quality?

It’s great for UConn. It’s great for Connecticut. But it’s great, above all, for the individual American Spirit, in which the effort to have a successful life usually means (a) a test of commitment and endurance, (b) a talent for not getting discouraged, and (c) a capacity for excelling in a sportsmanlike manner.

Other cultures besides our own have read athletics in this way. The ancient Greeks, who invented the very notion of democracy, were, as we know, fanatics with regard to sports. When a Greek watched not one but two of his sons win victories at Olympia, all of those around him cried in his direction: "Die now!" No greater glory could be imagined. The rest of his life would inevitably be a downhill experience.

But that took place long before the most democratic society of all met radio and television. Suddenly you didn’t have to have a lot of money to witness an athletic triumph by traveling to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx or to Wimbledon in England. Right there on the screen in your living room, you can watch the UConn Huskies enacting, in their own way, the deepest dramas of your own existence.

Such were some of my thoughts as I watched the Huskies win. Was it only my imagination, or did I actually feel more energetic the next morning as I made my way to the George Washington University campus and prepared to tackle my work? Truly, as my friends have often told me, life is essentially a game.

Reprinted from The Hartford Courant, April 4, 1999

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg
is President of The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., and a Professor there of Public Administration. A member of Benjamin B. French Lodge No. 15 and the Scottish Rite Bodies of Washington, D.C., he has been instrumental in expanding the Scottish Rite Scholarship Program at GWU. For his outstanding service, he was invested a K.C.C.H. in 1991, coroneted a 33° in 1993, and elected a Grand Cross in 1997.